Misanthropaea

Garments of Vengeance

I am not a terribly religious person. You may have figured that one out on your own. I am, however, somewhat spiritual, though some would obviously beg to differ – after, of course, the obligatory theatrical spit take. Honestly, kids, the name of the blog is Misanthropaea after all (my own taxonomic construct, thank you) and not Comforting Warm Fuzzy.

Yesterday I read in the newspaper about a local girl who is going to be spending some quality time in a correctional facility because her neighbour, whilst throwing out her trash, heard something crying in the dumpster. It was a baby. About 2 to 4 hours old. Thoughtlessly cast into the rubbish bin because the ignorant whore who brought it into the world ‘didn’t know what to do with it.’

Now, I’m not especially fond of the piercing wail of a child – it is not high on my list of favourite sounds – but it does not mean, however, that I dislike children. I fully well comprehend the biological underpinnings of children crying. I just happen to find it piercing. It does not mean that I would ever – ever – presume to literally throw out a human life as if it were so much useless trash.

There are many options and courses of action to take, if needed, before you ever get to the utterly heinous point of throwing away a child. Like, for example, learning to say ‘No’ and keeping your fucking pants on.

About five years ago, a teenage girl was abducted from her home in the middle of the night – by some ‘friends’ – and was taken out to a remote cornfield where she was stripped naked, humiliated, made to beg on her hands and knees to the worthless piece of shit motherfucker she had apparently ‘cheated’ on, and then she was shot in the head execution style and her body was burnt.

The punk-ass fuck who instigated this abomination was stunned to discover that he was going to face life in prison and possibly death.

But despite my decidedly non-christian leanings, I want to see people like this get the full and righteous Old Testament treatment. Absolute eye-for-an-eye. Does that mean you have to eat with the same hand you wipe your ass with after stealing? Why not. It works in other countries. I say take them out to a cornfield and make them beg. They threw out their chance to be treated as meaningful members of society the minute the gun went off or the minute they closed the dumpster lid.

Fucking people like this just make me sick… 

The Nature of Personal Reality, With Apologies to Seth…

Not necessarily by choice, I have spent the better part of my adult life working in the customer service industry.  Often times what was meant to be a short-term position, something to keep money coming in until I found something more appropriately suited to my wide variety of skills, interests, and abilities – or until my own business took off – has ended up consuming and controlling a vast portion of my life.  As both of the long-time readers of this blog know, the time vampire in question here had previously been Dribble & Whizz. Now of course it is their arch-rival, Liqu-O-Rama, which is sucking dry my dark and miserable soul. 

But for all the years I have spent laboriously doling out yummy room-temperature pints of breakfast to the great unwashed masses, for all the copious, encyclopaedic product knowledge I have managed to acquire, for all of the training I have gained in sometimes deftly navigating the tepid beige waters of retail sales, I will never fully understand how it is that the very fabric of reality seems to vanish once a customer crosses the threshold.

Perhaps it is simply a matter (though at present undocumented) that nearly all retail establishments are situated on ley lines and, as such, tap into the vast stores of electromagnetic energy generated deep within the Earth to manifest most of the odd and unexplainable  behaviour. 

Or it may just be that they are conveniently located in areas where the veil between dimensions is most tenuous. 

Whatever the reasons, though the true Physical Reality (illustrated right) in any retail environment is typically one of a ready-to-be-helpful (and sometimes smiling) associate who is prepared and (usually)  fully trained to make someone’s shopping experience a smooth and effortless one – an individual who is there to answer all pertinent questions and who is willing and able to provide the customer with whatever guidance or assistance they could possibly require before, during, and possibly even after a potential transaction – the Perceived Reality is, rather unfortunately, this…

The clerk is diminished to abject  insignificance; more often seen by the customer – if they are even seen at all – as a subservient lackey unworthy of even the most fragmentary acknowledgement beyond that which is required by absolute necessity; a dehumanised Yard Jockey void of all thought and feeling who  may easily be dismissed or disregarded as one chats away on a cell phone; a minimum-wage Step n’ Fetchit  at whom to bark a list of demands in lieu of greeting; a vacuous Yazza Boss upon whom civility is clearly wasted;  in short, a Jar Jar Binks, if you will.

Does that seem unduly harsh? Does that seem racist? Does it seem insulting? Welcome to the opposite side of the customer service counter.

For whatever reason, once a customer has crossed into the netherworld of a retail store, the perceived reality changes. Somehow it becomes perfectly acceptable to respond to ‘Hello’ with non-linear statements such as ‘You look like shit’ or ‘Pack of Marlboro’ or ‘Double bag that, boy.’ It is acceptable to unload personal and mental baggage in great and sordid detail or to find the clerk somehow responsible for all of one’s worldly woes. It is permissible to cough or sneeze directly upon a clerk without the superfluous need for covering one’s mouth or turning one’s head or the triviality of an apology.     

Curiously enough, though many customers may frequently identify all manner of fault with their given service, they often do so without ever once comprehending or recognising their own contribution to the problem or understanding the basic concept of cause and effect.  Granted there are exceptions.

Apparently there is no recognition, no comprehension that, for example, when one waltzes into a store on a holiday such as Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s Eve, Rosh Hashanah, or Samhain – and generally with and attitude – there is someone there to assist you; someone whose job it is to see to it that you get the things you felt were so important and to ensure you needn’t worry about bagging your own items or pulling them out of the cart or having to figure out that whole silly and complicated money thing; someone who gave up time with their family and friends so that you could magnanimously mock and belittle them in front of your own friends.

The thing is though, we are not here to throw away your freshly-used tissues or those curious objects found in your pockets or the wrapper from something you just bought and cannot restrain yourself from opening in the store or just because the long slow lonely walk to a rubbish bin conveniently located by the exit would be unnecessarily burdensome to you. We are not here to explain to you the historical precedents and the minute details of why foreign currency, video game- and/or miniature golf tokens, blank slugs, or bits of lint are not acceptable as legal tender as established by the Coin Acts of 1792 & 1965 respectively and neither did we have any direct responsibility in signing those acts into law.  We do not care why you are buying something and do not require a lengthy rhetorical dissertation on the matter referencing people or situations of which we have no prior knowledge.  

But reality can quite often be a fickle thing.  Even though it may seem that the clerk is an irrelevant and inconsequential non-entity, a needless and irritating hindrance to the transaction process, some thing at which to distractedly throw your money, merely a turd in an apron who is incapable of finding gainful employment elsewhere, it is quite often also true that,  in your perceived reality, you may very well have every confidence that you look like this…

 

 

 

    …when in fact, from the opposite side of the  customer service counter, you really look like this…

  

The Magical Talking Anus

(From Previously Unpublished Archives)

I heard the door open and before it even closed, before I could even have an opportunity to react, I hear: 'Yeah, I'llablahblahblah.'

'I'll be there in just a second...' I said as politely as I could. I was fifteen feet away, my back to her as I was bent over a trash barrel in the process of changing the liner.

'You having a bad day or something?' the woman spoke to my ass for the second time.

I paused. Took a breath. Standing up and turning around to face her, I replied as gently and as congenially as I could muster as I approached the register area: 'Oh no, it's just that I was right in the middle of something--' I indicated the trash can '--and wasn't able to take your order from across the room. Now. What can I get for you?'

'I want carmel in it.'

'Oh. Okay. Caramel in what?'

'My latte.'

'What size would you like?'

She huffed a rancorous, burning stench of old cigarettes into my face. Clearly I was pretty stupid if I couldn't remember her order in just a few seconds. 'Large.'

'Did you want that for here, or to go?'

She huffed again. My ignorance was simply appalling. 'To go.'

'So a large caramel latte, then?'

'Yes. And I want carmel in that too.'

'Yep--' Who's the stupid one now, bitch? '--I've got that written down. Caramel.' And so, after taking her credit card for the requisite amount, I made the drink and handed it across the counter to her. 'Large caramel latte,' I said, 'with carmel in it. To go...' because I didn't want her to think I had forgotten.

Hygiene Tips From Sunny Dick #6

As the boys in the room (and some of you more adventurous women) will gladly agree, with an all-knowing nod of the head, there is a very specific and immediately  recognisable odour  inherent to every men's room in the populated centres of the contiguous United States and quite possibly all of North America; the astringent and often-times overwhelming bouquet of naphthalene or industrially-perfumed paradichlorobenzene in the form of what is commonly referred to as the Urinal Puck, the Urinal Mint, or my own personal favourite, the Toilet Lolly.
So when you come a-shopping dowsed in the cloying reek of commercial sanitisers and various eye-wateringly floral ammonium compounds, would it surprise you to know that every man within a fifty foot radius instantly understands that either you spent some quality nocturnal time in the badly-tiled fluorescent grandeur of the WC at the local 24-hour truck stop or you took a five dollar joy ride on a wall mounted American Standard so that you would have enough for your icy cold pint of breakfast. Given the tell-tale crusty glaze around your mouth, I opt for the latter. Or is that misapplied lip gloss? Next time at least steal a bottle of Chanel -- it is the Now & Forever Fragrance...

Hygiene Tips From Sunny Dick #5

Rheum, a Middle English word (derived, like so many of our words, from Latin), describes something which flows and, in the current vernacular, is most often applied to things like that moist warm whitish-yellow phlegmy snot presently flowing both out of your nose and down the back of your throat, forcing you to make that irritating sniffing noise every few seconds and clear your throat because your tiny, primitive brain cannot grasp the concept of 'tissue paper.'

Rheum--or rheumy--also describes that sound you make as you gasp for breath from too many cigarettes or the advanced stages of your viral or venereal infection: you know, that deliciously wet rumbling sound deep in your chest which makes it sound like you are trying to breathe in a bowl of runny Jell-O tapioca pudding, or  that your lungs are filling with smouldering Napalm?

Yes, that viscous, slimy combination of mucins, water, electrolytes and non-keratinised stratified squamous epithelium is secreted in the nasal and esophageal lining (and by other body cavities) and is primarily a protective lubricate--for your body.  I, like everyone else, have my own mucus, thank you, and so I don't really need you to stand in front of me barking up some hot thick boogery goodness to sprinkle across the counter top or, more importantly, in my face.

In this modern age with threats of bio-terrorism, I suggest you cover your mouth with your hand next time you decide to regurgitate a lungful of rich and creamy infection to share--because the last thing you will see before the lights go out for the last time is a brief glint of steel and my smiling face...

Another Reason To Hate People

Even though I am, admittedly and rather proudly, a misanthrope, I am a misanthrope who desperately wants to believe that there is good in people and that they will someday--somehow--learn and change.

And then I go shopping at Wal-Mart. Not because I enjoy it or support their close ties with Communist China it, but because I can afford it. Sometimes.

So there we are, strolling through the white-washed fluorescent grandeur when I hear a child wailing. And I mean wailing: just the most obnoxious, unbearable, earsplitting shrieking and crying you can possibly imagine.

'Well, there's a happy sound,' I grumble to my girlfriend.

'No shit,' she agrees, shaking her head.

And we come to the corner at one of the vast intersections of high-gloss tile between men's wear and children's wear and she stops the cart, and jerks it to the right. I have to step back before she hits me. But I see what she sees.  Just about twenty feet away, sitting on the floor, completely unattended, is a small child, maybe about a year old, screaming and crying one of those deep long, raspy, hiccoughy kind of cries. He has his arms outstretched in a grasping motion and he is screaming after the fat skank Mexican cunt and an entire pack of losers who are completely ignoring him as they continue on their merry little shopping spree. After a second, the kid begins to crawl after them, wailing even harder.

My girlfriend is glaring at the pack of Mexicans who are blithely deserting the child. I glance up in utter disbelief not just at the child and the abandoning scumbags, but at the scrawny punk-ass black kid--a fucking Wal-Mart employee--just standing there folding clothes and 'ignoring' the entire scene happening right in front of him and not doing anything.

I turned around to face the opposite direction. There is a certain point at which my fury and outrage at the galling inhumanity just leaves me wanting to explode and kill someone, and I have to pause before I act. Just about that time, the child had reached the point where Punk-Ass Kid was working (and still totally ignoring his wails) and my girlfriend started to push the cart forward. She had been glaring at the departing Mexicans until one of them turned around and looked back.  Fat Skank Cunt finally addressed the wailing child in low, hissing, nasty Latino tones of love and stomped back to get him, pretending poorly not to notice the glaring looks from us. We just stood and watched her. Meanwhile, Punk-Ass Kid just continued to fold clothing and look around at everything but us or them.

The whole thing took about a minute and it was over before either of us had to intervene, but it was enough to make me mad as fuck for about the next hour.  Some times I simply cannot believe the way people act. What the fuck kind of scumbag whackjob leaves their bawling child in a fucking Wal-Mart to 'teach them a lesson?' And what the fuck kind of piece of shit employee just stands there and ignores an obviously distressed and abandoned child?

Un-fucking-believable...

Coladas Interruptus

'I wonder if you can help me?'
'I can certain--'
'I'm looking for a Pina Colada mix called, oh I don't know, something like Sunsations or Suntastic or maybe something like that. Do you have that?'
'I'm not familiar with the brand, but I can--'
'Or maybe it's Sunsational.'
'--look it up in our computer system and see --'
'Or something like that.'
'--if any of our other stores carry--'
'It had the word "sun" in it, I think.'
'--it.'
'Or maybe not.'
'Well, it looks like--'
'Oh I don't know what it was called.'
'--there's no listing--'
'We had it on the cruise and I'm probably just thinking of something else.'
'--for it--'
'Do you have anything that's comparable to that?'
'To--?'
'Just a Pina Colada mix of some kind. It's doesn't need to be Sunsations.'
'Well, over here I have a number of--'
'I just don't know my way around a liquor store.'
'--Pina Colada mixes--'
'But I'm getting better at it.'
Yes, and it's too bad you can't shut the fuck up for thirty seconds... '--from different manufacturers--'
'Is that the white one?'
'...Yes.'
'Is there a difference between them?'
Between what? That's one bottle... 'Well this one--'
'Because I don't want to spend my money on something that tastes horrible.'
'--is the most popular brand we sell.'
'Is it good?'
'Well it's certainly popu--'
'Because the one we had on the cruise was just so good.'
'--lar and the price--'
'But you probably don't carry that, do you?'
'--isn't outlandish compared to the other ones.'
'But you don't have Sunsations?'
Haven't we just been through this, you stupid bitch? 'No. We have these three--'
'Is this any good?'
'...Yes, it's the most popular--'
'I'm just so concerned that it's not going to taste like what we had on the cruise.'
'...I'm sure it will be--'
'Well I'll just try this one for now.'
'--perfectly fine.'
'What about Grenadine? Do you carry Grenadine or something like that?'
'Yes, we have that right--'
'I'm not even sure what it is.'
'--here on this shelf--'
'But I know they used it on the cruise ship.'
'--here.'
'It's red or something.'
'Yes. It's a red--'
'Is that red?'
It's a clear glass bottle, you cow. What the fuck does it look like? '...Yyyyesss...'
'Do you know which one is better?'
'I would go for this one, here, simply because--'
'And what about black raspberry liqueur? Do you have that?'
'Yes. We have that--'
'Or black cherry.'
'--right over here on the top shelf.'
'Or blackberry.'
'This is Chambord, which is--'
'Or a blueberry I guess would do too.'
'Which did you want?'
'It really doesn't matter, I guess.'
'Well the Chambord--'
'They used it on the cruise'
'--is the only true black raspberry we have--'
'Oh it was so good!'
'--or we have a blackberry brandy that's a little--'
'And creme de coconut too.'
'--less expensive.'
'Or maybe it was creme de cacao--Oh I don't know! Which one tastes like coconut?'
'That would be creme de co--'
'I think it's white or something.'
'--conut.'
'Is it coconut?'
'Yes.'
'Do you have that?'
'We have cream of coco--'
'In the little can?'
'--nut, in the little can--yes.'
'Is there a difference?'
'Between what?'
'Between these two?'
'One is a larger can, but they're both--'
'Well I guess I only need a little bit. The big can is just too expensive.'
'Is that going to be all for you today--?'
'Is this Starbuck's stuff any good?'
'If you like Star--'
'I've never tried it but I've heard it's good.'
'--buck's, it is.'
'Well I'll just try one of these little bottles.'
'Alrighty then. Anything else for--?'
'Do you know when you'll be getting that in?'
'I'm sorry?'
'Do you know when that will be in?'
'When what will be in?'
'The Sunsations?'
'...We don't--'
'Or Sunsational or whatever.'
'--carry that brand--'
'I may have the name all wrong.'
'--as I explained.'
'We drank so much on the cruise and it was just so delicious! So you're not sure when it's coming in?'
'The Sunsations?'
'Is that what it's called!?'
*Sigh*  'I believe so, yes...'

Warm Fuzzy

Possibly one of the more irritating examples of blatantly obtuse behaviour masquerading as benign charity torn from the pages of  Seven Habits of Highly Defective People is the maddening  penchant for a customer to wait (usually quite impatiently and with a great rolling of the eyes and huffing and shifting their generous weight from foot to foot) as you laboriously produce the change from their purchase (say, perhaps, a delicious pint of lunch) and then finally put that change into their moist and outstretched wagging hand so that they, in turn, can place it in the Take A Penny, Leave A Penny cup. This is specifically true when a purchase is of a total price between, for example, 5.94 and 5.99 and thus the change being returned falls between the amounts of 1 to 6 cents. Amounts larger than 6 cents are generally, although not always, pocketed-- 'For the next time.' 

The perpetrators are, of course, the usual lot one might expect--those of the Tie-Wearing Entrepreneurial Representative Paradigm (TWERP) or the Tiny Witless Ignominious Things (TWIT) and the Tightly Wound Argumentative Types (TWAT) or the Gormless In-bred Troglodytes (GIT) and the Sycophantic Oleaginous Dullards (SOD)--who apparently feel as if they need to somehow reach out to the down-trodden--the little man--and vicariously embrace that warm, fuzzy feeling of generosity and giving so that they can feel better about themselves, like Ebeneezer Scrooge on Christmas Morning.

But often times they cannot be bothered to physically touch the change themselves, as this would clearly taint their very being, or at the very least pass onto them the dreaded Clerk Cooties, and without the solace of the circled letters CP written in pen on the proffered hand they are obviously at high risk of contamination.  Rather they stand glaring at you--palm still outstretched, of course--as you work to remove the change from the cash drawer with the lightning rapidity they so adamantly demand (because, after all, you are keeping them from that nutritious pint of vodka and they've only got another twenty minutes for lunch) and, when you go to hand them the change, they  suddenly whisk away their outstretched palm, step back from the counter and, in a hurried sort of annoyance (probably because you almost touched them) they wag a pointed finger at the Take A Penny cup and say  'Just put it in there!' Charity by proxy.

Yeah, right now, somewhere in some nameless Third World Country, there's a starving child with a distended abdomen whose smile is just a little bit brighter because of people like that...

Unworthy

Very many of the world's faiths teach that God is everywhere. (Well, except for Fundamentalist Brand Christianity.  Fundamentalist Brand Christianity teaches that God is in little rectangular bits of green paper). And today, after all this time, he finally managed to pencil in a little time for a special appearance at Dribble & Whizz. How fortunate I felt when in swaggered Self-Absorbed-Talking-All-Cool-Like-On-the-Cell-Phone-College-Guy. How lucky I felt when he paid me absolutely no attention when I greeted him--not even the slightest glance my direction to acknowledge that someone had spoken to him (because the tiny sound of a simple mortal cannot hope to attain the ears of the divine)! How I nearly swooned when, after five minutes of him pacing backwards and forwards through the store, I got the blessing of the "Shush Finger" when I dared ask him if he was looking for something. How I almost wet myself in sheerest glee when he started talking about money and a mystical thing called "bets" really loud. How I thought I might have to dab the sweat from my forehead and have a cool glass of water when, after another five minutes of basking in the glory that was him, I got the blessed "Shush Finger" a second time when I attempted to ask him if he actually planned  to buy anything--not that his allowing us to witness his vast and supreme coolness wasn't enough, but after a while I figured a crowd might start swarming and blot out his ethereal light. How I almost wept with joy when, like Moses before the burning bush, he snapped his cell phone closed with a sharp crack! of finality and with the singing of angels backing him in chorus demanded "Jack?"as if it were the third time he had to ask such a basic question of such an unimportant carbon-based creature.

Thanks Self-Absorbed-Talking-All-Cool-Like-On-the-Cell-Phone-College-Guy!

Mucus, The Gift of Love

Rich, elitist scumbags never fail to take my breath away with their own special brand of arrogance, disrespect, and complete disregard for anyone but themselves, as if the entire world is their toilet, open and ready for use, and those of us in it are merely the empty-headed animal food trough wipers standing at the ready to do their bidding, to be their own personal Jar Jar Binks. So when this pear-shaped bag of shit waddled in with his gold rings, pleated slacks and stinking of too much Tag body spray (because, well, chicks on TV rip their clothes off for you if you wear Tag and, honestly, they should only be doing that kind of thing for me because I'm the most important person ever on the face of the planet) to get a can of Red Bull and three "little tiny shooters" of Smirnoff for brunch, I wasn't expecting much in the way of sparkling conversation.

I was also not expecting him to tell me--not ask me, but tell me: "Yeah, and give me a paper towel or Kleenex why don't you."

Yessah, Ani, meessah go get a tissue...

So I hand him a paper towel which is, after all, what he asked for first (even though the Kleenex was actually closer and clearly withing visual range had he bothered to look).

And he blows his nose--a loud, elephantine honk; a discordant trumpet blast like the angel Gabriel on an off-day--wipes his face as if he'd just finished a spaghetti buffet, complete with the necessary moans and groans, and then...wait for it...

That's right:

He goes to hand me his big snotty wet paper towel.

I stared at him in utter disbelieve as he waggled his mucus at me like Thurston Howell III and then I let out a scoffing laugh--which obviously struck him like a physical blow. How dare I!?

"I'm sorry, man," I continued to laugh in amazement, shaking my head. "There's a trash can right outside the door." I pointed to it, all of ten feet away. "I'm not your boy."

He glowed red--whether out of anger or embarrassment, I don't know--snatched up his purchase and stormed out.
I hope he has the nerve to complain to my district manager. I really do. I may be a lot of things but, seriously, I'm not your bitch...